Edit: long, and old, but timely and well worth the read.In the decades after World War II the United States and the rest of the industrialized world developed a deep and irrevocable dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, the world's largest and most important producer. But by the mid-1980s—with the Iran-Iraq war raging, and the opec oil embargo a recent and traumatic memory—the supply, which had until that embargo been taken for granted, suddenly seemed at risk. Disaster planners in and out of government began to ask uncomfortable questions. What points of the Saudi oil infrastructure were most vulnerable to terrorist attack? And by what means? What sorts of disruption to the flow of oil, short-term and long-term, could be expected? These were critical concerns. Underlying them all was the fear that a major attack on the Saudi system could cause the global economy to collapse.
The Saudi system seemed—and still seems—frighteningly vulnerable to attack. Although Saudi Arabia has more than eighty active oil and natural-gas fields, and more than a thousand working wells, half its proven oil reserves are contained in only eight fields—including Ghawar, the world's largest onshore oil field, and Safaniya, the world's largest offshore oil field. Various confidential scenarios have suggested that if terrorists were simultaneously to hit only a few sensitive points "downstream" in the oil system from these eight fields—points that control more than 10,000 miles of pipe, both onshore and offshore, in which oil moves from wells to refineries and from refineries to ports, within the kingdom and without—they could effectively put the Saudis out of the oil business for about two years. And it just would not be that hard to do.
---
If I had to pick a single moment when the House of Saud truly began to fall apart, it would be when Abdul Aziz ibn Saud's son Fahd, who has been king since 1982, suffered a near fatal stroke, in 1995. As soon as the royal family heard about Fahd's stroke, it went on high alert. From all over Riyadh came the thump-thump of helicopters and the sirens of convoys converging on the hospital where Fahd had been taken.
Among the first to arrive were Jawhara al-Ibrahim, Fahd's fourth and favorite wife, and their spoiled, megalomaniac twenty-nine-year-old son Abdul Aziz—or "Azouzi" ("Dearie"), as Fahd called him. Anyone who knew how Fahd's court ran knew the extent to which Fahd had come to depend on Jawhara, who helped him with everything from remembering his medicine to handling intricate problems of foreign policy. If a prince wanted a matter immediately brought to Fahd's attention, he called Jawhara. As for Abdul Aziz, he was the youngest of Fahd's children and the apple of his father's eye. Fahd indulged him in everything. Stories circulated widely about Abdul Aziz's riding a Harley-Davidson inside his father's palace, chasing servants and smashing furniture. Most of the royal family found the king's indulgence strange. Abdul Aziz was pimply, craven, a bit slow. Apparently, though, he was regarded as the king's good-luck charm. Fahd's favorite soothsayer had once told him that as long as Abdul Aziz was by his side, the king would have a long, fulfilling life. So Fahd did not complain when Abdul Aziz spent $4.6 billion on a sprawling palace and theme park outside Riyadh, because Abdul Aziz was "interested" in history. The property includes a scale model of old Mecca, with actors attending mosque and chanting prayers twenty-four hours a day, and also replicas of the Alhambra, Medina, and half a dozen other Islamic landmarks.
Atlantic Monthly
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
